ERIE, Pa. -- Former Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper included a critique of the Erie region's political culture in her announcement that she's barging into the Democratic primary for Erie County executive against a viable incumbent.

She talked at her kickoff announcement on Monday about bringing more vision to the office on issues such as economic development, poverty and stemming the region's brain drain. And she said Grossman, who in his re-election announcement Friday also pledged to run "a visionary campaign," isn't cutting it.

Dahlkemper didn't limit her report card on the status quo to Grossman. She talked about an overall torpor in the region's electoral ranks.

She argued that we need people who will lead the region forward rather than just manage the government. And she said we need more than "leaders who are comfortable in managing the continued decline of our home," echoing similar words used by County Councilman Phil Fatica in 2010 to explain his vote for establishing a community college.

I have no idea just whom Dahlkemper counts as part of the problem of government drift. But I did get a chuckle at County Councilman Fiore Leone's expense.

Leone attended Dahlkemper's announcement and said he's leaning toward supporting her because "she's got a lot of good things to say." That brought to mind a wry observation a woman made a day earlier on Twitter about a recent newspaper report: "Nothing reminds me of how progressive Erie is as when I see the ETN cite 'Leone, a county councilman since 1978 ...'"

Dahlkemper will have to back up her bold talk in the weeks ahead with specifics about what's included in her vision for the region and how she'd bring the county's top office to bear on it. Grossman, who rooted his re-election announcement largely in his first-term record, will have to answer with some agenda of his own.

Harnessing the county executive's office for purposes more expansive than merely managing the county's bureaucracy is complicated by the fact the job's assigned responsibilities are fairly narrow. On paper, it's largely an administrative gig.

That's not sufficient to the need for coherent and sustained regional action on regional issues, and it's difficult to extend the position's reach because of the balkanization of power and resources built into how Pennsylvania organizes local communities and government.

For those of us who believe that patchwork of turf and the attendant inertia imperil the region's future, that means looking for something of a political magician. Even with its constraints, county executive is the best available platform for a deft political operator to build networks and coalitions capable of coloring outside of the lines.

I've daydreamed, for example, about Republican state Sen. Jane Earll, now newly retired from the Senate, turning her savvy and connections to the task. The idea clearly interested me more than her the couple of times I asked her about it.

The best-case scenario would be having forward-looking, dynamic and complementary leaders in both the county executive's office and across Perry Square on the fifth floor of City Hall. That would align the representative of the region's largest constituency with the leader of its biggest subset.

Rick Schenker and Rick Filippi talked the talk of becoming such a tag team across party lines when they took office as county executive and mayor respectively in 2002. Then each flamed out in his own way without really testing the premise.

As the county's stagnant population base has steadily bled from city to suburbs, and the city increasingly has become a repository for the worst of the region's problems, a mayor's voice doesn't carry like it once did. But the office still could be a formidable force in advancing a vision beyond the day-to-day working of the city's operational levers.

In his seven-plus years in the top job, however, Joe Sinnott has shown he's not interested in (or perhaps capable of) being that sort of mayor. The lack of any opposition to his re-election this year locks in four more years of small ball at City Hall.

In some ways that ups the ante in the county executive's race. Someone has to connect the dots for the public in regard to the region's problems and trend lines, and pound away at why more of the same won't turn things around.

The job's not really designed for that sort of thing. But when you're operating in a system hatched in Harrisburg for times long past, you have to work with what you've got.